HIS 130: African American History - From African Origins through Disunion

Comprehensive review flashcards covering ancient African civilizations, the transatlantic slave trade, colonial slavery, revolutionary movements, the Cotton Kingdom, abolitionism, and the political descent into the American Civil War.

According to evolutionary biology and prehistoric archaeology, what genetic model and ancestral figure trace modern humans back to Africa?

The "Mitochondrial Eve" hypothesis supports the out-of-Africa model, demonstrating that all modern humans descended from a single African woman who lived in East Africa between $100{,}000$ and $200{,}000$ years ago.

What was the core disagreement between Afrocentricists and Eurocentric traditionalists in the late 20th-century debate regarding ancient Egypt?

Afrocentricists argued that ancient Egypt was an indigenous Black African civilization that originated Mediterranean philosophy and science, whereas Eurocentric traditionalists asserted that modern racial categories did not apply to ancient Egyptians and credited Greek civilization with developing empirical inquiry and individual freedom.

How did Nubia and Egypt interact politically and culturally during the first millennium BCE?

Nubia and Egypt engaged in extensive cultural exchange, with monarchical concepts originally arising in Nubia before spreading to Egypt. During Egypt's decline, the Nubian Kingdom of Kush, under King Piankhy, conquered Lower Egypt; its monarchs ruled as pharaohs and were buried in pyramid tombs adorned with Egyptian hieroglyphics.

What religious distinction did the Kingdom of Axum achieve in the 4th century CE after absorbing Kush?

Axum became the first Christian state in sub-Saharan Africa after absorbing the Kingdom of Kush.

What technological and commercial animal introduction in the 1st century CE revolutionized the trans-Saharan trade for Ancient Ghana?

The camel, introduced from Asia into Africa in the $1\text{st}$ century CE, enabled merchants to traverse the Sahara Desert carrying heavy loads of gold, pepper, and war captives while consuming minimal water and food.

What historical event across North Africa is illustrated along this route from Timbuktu and Gao to Mecca?

Mansa Musa's 1324 pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca, during which the Mali emperor traveled across Cairo with an entourage of $60{,}000$ people and distributed vast reserves of gold, establishing Mali's immense wealth across the Islamic world and Europe.

What institutional features made 14th-century Timbuktu a major cosmopolitan center of scholarship in the Mali Empire?

Timbuktu housed $150$ Islamic schools, a prestigious law school, and a thriving book-trade network, fostering a climate of intellectual exchange and ethnic tolerance.

Which ancient civilization in the West African forest region developed advanced iron smelting and terra-cotta sculpture around 500 BCE?

The Nok culture developed advanced iron-working technology and terra-cotta sculptures around $500\text{ BCE}$.

Why is King Nzinga Mbemba (Afonso I) of Kongo considered a "cautionary tale" regarding early African-European relations?

Although Afonso I converted to Catholicism and adopted Portuguese customs to modernize his kingdom, the Portuguese exploited the relationship by disregarding the Regimento agreement, fueling illegal slaving raids, inciting internal rebellion, and ultimately reducing Kongo to a Portuguese client state by $1588$.

How was domestic slavery structured within indigenous West African societies prior to European contact?

Indigenous West African slavery was generally non-chattel and non-perpetual; war captives retained legal rights, children did not automatically inherit slave status through the maternal line, and enslaved individuals could own property, serve as royal courtiers, or integrate into family lineages.

What roles did the Sande and Poro secret societies fulfill in West African societies?

The female Sande and male Poro societies served as community institutions that initiated adolescents into adulthood, taught ethical and moral norms, and provided sexual and vocational education.

What were the primary spiritual beliefs of indigenous West African religions in the forest region?

Indigenous West African religions were animistic and polytheistic, acknowledging a supreme creator alongside nature spirits (such as the Simbi in rivers, trees, and rocks) and practicing ancestor veneration through elaborate funeral rites that linked the living to the dead.

What was the societal function of griots (jali) in West African oral tradition?

Griots (jali) were professional oral historians and poet-musicians who preserved communal genealogies, royal achievements, and historic epics—such as the Mandinka historical song "Toolongjong"—entirely by spoken word and song.

What specific agricultural expertise did West African captives introduce that proved vital to the colonial South Carolina Low Country?

Sophisticated rice cultivation methods, including engineering complex dikes, ditch networks, tidal floodings, and transplanting sprouts.

What were the three distinct stages of the Triangular Slave Trade across the Atlantic?

The first leg carried manufactured goods (textiles, firearms, alcohol) from Europe to Africa; the second leg (the Middle Passage) transported enslaved Africans to the Americas; and the third leg transported slave-produced raw materials (sugar, tobacco, rice, cotton) from the Americas back to Europe.

What Atlantic maritime current and wind system did Christopher Columbus use in 1492 that established the standard pathway for subsequent slaving voyages?

The "volta do mar" ("turn of the sea"), a navigational route that utilized the northeast trade winds and the Canary Current to propel ships westward across the Atlantic.

How did the Barbary slave trade of North Africa differ from the transatlantic slave trade?

The Barbary trade enslaved between $1\text{ million}$ and $1.5\text{ million}$ Europeans as well as Africans without regard to race, prompting Catholic redemptionist orders like the Mercedarians and Trinitarians to raise ransom funds to liberate Christian captives.

What was the Spanish "Asiento" in the context of the transatlantic slave trade?

The Asiento was an exclusive commercial contract granted by the Spanish crown to private companies or foreign powers to supply a specified quota of enslaved Africans to Spain's American colonies.

What central argument did historian Eric Williams present in his 1944 work 'Capitalism and Slavery'?

Williams argued that the vast profits accumulated from the triangular slave trade and slave-produced colonial commodities provided the capital that financed the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain.

What was the primary function of coastal slave factories and barracoons constructed along the West African coast?

Barracoons were fortified coastal holding pens (starting with Elmina in $1481$) where captives were stripped, medically examined, separated from family and ethnic groups to inhibit revolt, and branded before boarding slaving vessels.

What physical artifact is shown, and what was its purpose in the transatlantic slave trade?

A branding iron, used by European slaving syndicates such as the South Sea Company under the Asiento to mark human beings with heated metal as commercial property.

What did the practice of "tight packing" entail aboard transatlantic slave ships?

Captains crammed hundreds of captives into cargo holds with only $20$ to $25\text{ inches}$ of vertical headroom, maximizing numbers at the expense of ventilation and sanitation, which drastically heightened mortality from infectious diseases.

What historical slaving vessel is depicted in this 1788 abolitionist stowage broadside?

The British slave ship Brookes, illustrating how hundreds of enslaved Africans were tightly packed onto lower decks and platforms under regulated trade acts.

What specific device shown in this historical engraving was used by slave ship crews to force-feed captives who attempted self-starvation?

The speculum oris (labeled C/D/E), a scissor-like mechanical instrument inserted into a captive's mouth and expanded with a thumbscrew to pry the jaws open.

Who was this prominent 18th-century author, and what was his major autobiographical contribution?

Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa), an Igbo writer whose $1789$ autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, provided an eyewitness account of capture in West Africa, the Middle Passage, and his journey to purchasing his freedom.

What personal transformation led former slave ship captain John Newton to compose the hymn 'Amazing Grace'?

After surviving an Atlantic storm in $1748$, Newton underwent an evangelical conversion, later renounced the slave trade, was ordained an Anglican priest, and actively campaigned alongside abolitionists until Britain outlawed the trade in $1807$.

Why were enslaved African women subjected to unique abuses aboard transatlantic slave ships?

Because crew members viewed women as less likely to revolt, they granted them greater freedom of movement above deck, which exposed them to constant sexual assault and rape by European sailors.

What occurred during the Caribbean slave sale auction known as "the scramble"?

Captains established fixed prices for men, women, and children, corralled captives together in an open yard, and allowed prospective buyers to rush in en masse to physically grab and rope the individuals they wished to purchase.

What did the plantation process of "seasoning" involve for newly arrived African captives in the West Indies?

A brutal period of up to three years of physical and psychological subjugation where captives were forced to acclimate to a new climate, disease environment, and food supply, learn creole labor commands, and work in assigned labor gangs (Great Gang, Second Gang, or Third Gang).

What is the historical significance of this 1787 medallion designed for the British abolitionist movement?

Created by Josiah Wedgwood for the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, it depicted a kneeling chained African asking, "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?", becoming a symbol of British antislavery propaganda.

How did England's Vagabonds Act of 1547 serve as a legal precedent for chattel slavery in the British New World?

The Act authorized authorities to brand unemployed, wandering poor individuals on the breast with a "V" and force them into two years of involuntary servitude; if they ran away twice, they were branded on the cheek with an "S" for lifetime bondage, and a subsequent offense carried execution for felony.

What negative racial stereotypes did English traveler John Lok publish after his 1554 voyage to West Africa?

Lok described Africans as "beastly," "godless," and "monkeman like," while offensively characterizing African female anatomy and deriding communal family structures as lack of chastity.

What slaving expeditions did Sir John Hawkins conduct between 1563 and 1568?

Backed by Queen Elizabeth I, Hawkins led three voyages capturing nearly $2{,}000$ West Africans "partly by sword, and partly by other means" to sell illicitly to Spanish Caribbean ports, earning him a knighted coat of arms.

What was the legal and social status of the "20 and odd" Angolans who arrived at Jamestown aboard the White Lion in August 1619?

Because English statutory law lacked a slave code and the Angolans were baptized Christians (ladinos), colonial authorities treated them as unfree indentured servants eligible for freedom after working off their purchase debt, rather than hereditary slaves for life.

Who was Anthony Johnson (Antonio) in 17th-century Virginia, and what does his life demonstrate about the early Chesapeake?

Johnson was an Angolan who survived indentured servitude, acquired $250\text{ acres}$ of land, owned indentured servants and enslaved labor, and sued in court, demonstrating that Virginia did not have a rigid, color-based caste system before the $1670\text{s}$.

How did the 1662 Virginia House of Burgesses statute alter traditional English common law regarding hereditary status?

It instituted partus sequitur ventrem, decreeing that a newborn child's condition followed the status of the mother rather than the father, enabling white enslavers to sexually exploit enslaved women without bestowing freedom or inheritance on their offspring.

How did Nathaniel Bacon's Rebellion (1676–1677) accelerate the shift from white indentured servitude to race-based chattel slavery in Virginia?

The rebellion united armed poor white indentured servants and Black laborers against the planter elite; to prevent future interracial working-class uprisings, Virginia's assembly enacted strict Black codes that curtailed Black civil status and encouraged reliance on African slaves.

What did the introduction to the South Carolina Slave Code of 1696 openly acknowledge about the colony's reliance on enslaved labor?

It stated that the province could not be maintained without enslaved labor, while simultaneously justifying harsh subjugation by labeling Africans as having "barbarous, wild, savage natures" requiring strict laws.

What were the immediate causes and legal consequences of the 1739 Stono Rebellion in South Carolina?

Led by an Angolan named Jemmy Cato, $60$ enslaved men rebelled seeking freedom in Spanish Florida, killing $20$ whites; its suppression led to the Negro Act of 1740, which banned literacy, assembly, and independent food cultivation, while authorizing enslavers to execute rebellious captives.

What did linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner demonstrate about the Gullah-Geechee language in the Carolina Sea Islands?

Turner proved that Gullah was not broken English or "gibberish," but a creole containing identifiable syntax, vocabulary, and phonetic retentions from West African languages, preserved due to coastal geographic isolation and absentee planter dynamics.

What was the central division in the Frazier-Herskovits debate regarding African American culture?

E. Franklin Frazier argued that the Middle Passage and slavery completely stripped African Americans of their African cultural heritage, whereas Melville Herskovits argued that significant African "survivals" or "retentions" endured in religious ritual, music, kinship, and language.

How did colonial slavery in northern colonies like New England differ from Chesapeake and Low Country plantation systems?

Northern slavery operated as "family slavery" on small diversified farms or in urban artisan shops with only $1$ to $3$ captives per household; enslaved people lived under the same roof as enslavers, lacked large-scale gang labor, and had higher rates of self-purchase.

Who was Crispus Attucks during the imperial crisis leading to the American Revolution?

Crispus Attucks was a $37\text{-year-old}$ African and Native American sailor who was shot and killed by British soldiers in the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, making him the first casualty of the American Revolution.

What did Lord Mansfield rule in the landmark English case Somerset v. Stewart (1772)?

Mansfield ruled that slavery was so "odious" that it could not exist under English common law, declaring that any enslaved colonial person who set foot on English soil became legally free.

How did Dr. J. David Kemp's dissertation research reframe the relationship between self-emancipation and the Somerset decision?

By analyzing runaway slave advertisements that peaked in $1760$ before collapsing post-$1772$, Dr. Kemp proved that Black self-emancipation and legal action occurred simultaneously; enslaved people were actively freeing themselves and pressuring English courts rather than passively awaiting Mansfield's decree.

What intellectual milestone did Phillis Wheatley accomplish in 1773?

Enslaved in Boston, she published Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral in London, becoming the first published African American poet and demonstrating Black literary competence within the Enlightenment framework.

How did Benjamin Banneker confront Thomas Jefferson regarding the ideals of the American Revolution?

Banneker, an astronomer, mathematician, and federal surveyor of Washington, D.C., sent Jefferson an almanac along with a letter challenging the contradiction between Jefferson's words in the Declaration of Independence and his continued ownership of human beings.

What did Lord Dunmore's Proclamation of November 7, 1775, promise to enslaved Virginians?

It guaranteed freedom to any indentured servant or enslaved person owned by American Patriots who was willing to escape and bear arms for the British crown, forming Lord Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment.

How did James Armistead Lafayette contribute to the American victory at the Battle of Yorktown (1781)?

Serving as a double agent for the Marquis de Lafayette, Armistead infiltrated British General Cornwallis's headquarters, collecting intelligence on troop movements that helped secure the decisive American victory.

What three constitutional compromises over slavery were adopted at the 1787 Philadelphia Convention?

The Three-Fifths Compromise (counting three-fifths of enslaved people for congressional representation), the Fugitive Slave Clause (Article IV, Section 2), and the protection of the transatlantic slave trade from federal prohibition until $1808$.

How did Eli Whitney's 1793 invention of the cotton gin reshape southern agriculture and enslaved demographics?

By mechanizing seed removal from upland cotton, the gin made cotton agriculture profitable, increasing annual production from $3{,}000\text{ bales}$ in $1790$ to $178{,}000\text{ bales}$ in $1810$ and sparking the Second Middle Passage westward.

What was the "Second Middle Passage" in 19th-century United States history?

The forced internal migration of between $1\text{ million}$ and $2\text{ million}$ enslaved African Americans from the Upper South to the cotton and sugar plantations of the Deep South and Lower Mississippi Valley via overland coffles and coastal ships.

What events led Richard Allen and Absalom Jones to establish Mother Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia?

Facing segregation and physical removal by white congregants while praying at St. George's Methodist Church, Black worshipers walked out, prompting Richard Allen to organize Mother Bethel in $1794$, which became the founding congregation of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church.

Why did many Black abolitionists like Frederick Douglass oppose the American Colonization Society (ACS)?

They viewed the ACS as a proslavery effort designed to deport free Black people to Africa (Liberia) to safeguard slavery in the South, arguing instead that African Americans were citizens entitled to full civil equality within the United States.

What was the German Coast Uprising of January 8, 1811, and who led it?

Led by Charles Deslondes and inspired by the Haitian Revolution, an estimated $500$ enslaved and free Black people revolted outside New Orleans along the German Coast; after its suppression, white authorities executed dozens and displayed their heads on pikes along the Mississippi River.

What were the core goals of Denmark Vesey's 1822 planned uprising in Charleston, South Carolina?

Vesey, a free Black carpenter and AME church organizer, plotted to lead enslaved allies to seize Charleston's arsenals, kill white enslavers, liberate the city's Black population, and sail to the free republic of Haiti.

What occurred during Nat Turner's Rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831?

Believing he was commanded by God, Turner and roughly $70$ enslaved followers moved from farm to farm, killing between $55$ and $65$ white individuals before state militias suppressed the rebellion, leading to widespread reprisals and stricter Black Codes.

What key geographic boundary did the Missouri Compromise of 1820 establish regarding the spread of slavery?

It admitted Missouri as a slave state, Maine as a free state, and banned slavery in the remaining Louisiana Purchase territory north of the $36^\circ 30'$ parallel.

What proportion of white southerners owned enslaved people on the eve of the Civil War in 1860?

Roughly $75\%$ of white southerners owned no slaves; of the $25\%$ who did, half owned fewer than five, only $12\%$ owned more than twenty, and just $1\%$ owned more than fifty.

How did labor organization differ between tobacco or cotton plantations and Low Country rice estates?

Tobacco and cotton cultivation relied primarily on the gang system, where workers labored collectively from sunrise to sunset under constant overseer surveillance; rice estates used the task system, assigning specific daily tasks that allowed autonomy once complete.

What was the "Jezebel" trope and how did white enslavers use it in the antebellum South?

A derogatory stereotype claiming Black women were innately lustful and seductive, weaponized by enslavers to blame victims and legitimize the sexual abuse and rape of enslaved women.

What happened to the enslaved woman Celia in Missouri in 1855 after she killed her enslaver, Robert Newsom?

After suffering repeated rapes by Newsom since age $14$, Celia killed him in self-defense; her lawyers invoked an $1845$ statute protecting women from forced defilement, but an all-white jury convicted her of murder and she was executed.

How did the historical arguments of U.B. Phillips and Stanley Elkins differ regarding the character of enslaved people?

Phillips ($1910\text{s}$) depicted slavery as a benign school where inferior Africans were cared for by paternalistic masters; Elkins ($1959$) rejected genetic inferiority but argued that the trauma of plantation life turned enslaved people into dependent, child-like "Sambos."

How did northern states disenfranchise Black men during the antebellum decades?

Through black laws and constitutional provisions; for example, New York abolished property requirements for white men while requiring Black men to own $\$250$ in property, disenfranchising $93\%$ of Black northern voters outside of New England.

What core philosophy did William Lloyd Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) champion upon its founding in 1833?

Immediate, uncompensated emancipation and racial equality achieved through moral suasion—appealing to Christian consciences that slaveholding was a mortal sin.

How did Madison Washington secure freedom for 135 enslaved people aboard the Creole in November 1841?

Washington led an armed mutiny aboard the domestic slave vessel Creole en route from Virginia to New Orleans, redirecting the ship to the British Bahamas, where British authorities granted them freedom under British colonial emancipation law.

How did Henry "Box" Brown escape from slavery in Richmond, Virginia, in 1849?

Brown arranged to be sealed inside a wooden shipping crate measuring three feet long and transported by train and steamship to the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee.

What caused the ideological split between Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison in 1847–1851?

Douglass launched his own independent newspaper (The North Star) and embraced political and constitutional action against slavery alongside the Liberty Party, rejecting Garrison's non-voting approach and view of the U.S. Constitution as an "agreement with hell."

What did the Wilmot Proviso of 1846 propose regarding newly acquired Mexican territory?

Pennsylvania Congressman David Wilmot proposed banning slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico during the Mexican-American War; it repeatedly passed the House but was defeated in the southern-dominated Senate.

What were the major terms of the Compromise of 1850?

California entered as a free state, the domestic slave trade was banned in Washington, D.C., territorial governments in Utah and New Mexico were organized under popular sovereignty, Texas borders were adjusted, and a strict federal Fugitive Slave Act was enacted.

Why was the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 widely opposed in the North?

It denied accused runaways jury trials and the right to testify, compelled ordinary citizens to join posses, and paid federal commissioners $\$10$ for returning a captive south versus $\$5$ for declaring them free, leading abolitionists to condemn it as institutionalized bribery.

What historical event is depicted in Thomas Satterwhite Noble's 1867 painting 'The Modern Medea'?

The capture of escaped slave Margaret Garner in $1856$, who killed her two-year-old daughter Mary rather than see her returned to bondage under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

What political impact did Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' have on the national slavery debate?

Selling $300{,}000$ copies within a year, the novel presented the cruelty of slavery through characters like Uncle Tom and Simon Legree, turning northern sentiment against the Fugitive Slave Act while provoking southern condemnation.

How did Stephen A. Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820?

It opened Kansas and Nebraska territories to "popular sovereignty," allowing white settlers to vote on legalizing slavery in regions north of the $36^\circ 30'$ line, triggering the "Bleeding Kansas" guerrilla conflict and giving rise to the Republican Party.

What was the Supreme Court's ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)?

Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that Black people were not citizens and "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect," and that Congress lacked constitutional authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories, rendering the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional.

What was the objective of John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry on October 16, 1859?

Brown and a multiracial force of $21$ men seized the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, intending to distribute captured weapons to enslaved people, move south along the Appalachian Mountains, and spark a general uprising against slavery.

Which southern state seceded first following Abraham Lincoln's election in November 1860, and what event initiated the Civil War in April 1861?

South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860; the Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery bombarded U.S.-held Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.